Showing posts from category population.
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Iran’s Surprising and Shortsighted Shift on Family Planning
›August 8, 2012 // By Elizabeth Leahy Madsen
In late July, Iran’s government announced that it would no longer fund family planning programs, a dramatic reversal following 20 years of support. The change is especially abrupt for a country that has been lauded as a family planning success story, with thorough rural health services and an educated female population contributing to one of the swiftest demographic transitions in history.
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Three UN Millennium Development Targets Reached and a Review of the Human Drivers of Climate Change
›“It is plausible that key transitions in human evolutionary history have been driven in large part by climate change,” write Eugene A. Rosa and Thomas Dietz in “Human Drivers of National Greenhouse-Gas Emissions,” a literature review published by Nature Climate Change. “Changes in climate will doubtless be a key force in the future evolution of social systems, including all aspects of social, economic, and political life, while impinging on the health and well-being of the individuals who populate them.” Rosa and Dietz cite numerous studies to argue that nearly every facet of society will be affected by climate change. “The critical point,” they write, “is that population, affluence, technology, and all other drivers act not alone or additively but in a multiplicative fashion.” For example, rapid population growth can lead to an increase in urbanization, which generates “substantial demand for goods and services that can induce emissions in distant places.” They conclude that huge changes must be made in technology and consumption in order to combat the effects of climate change that are being caused by a growing population and an increasingly affluent world.The United Nations’ 2012 Millennium Development Goals Report, released last month in New York City, announces that three of the eight major human development goals have been reached ahead of their 2015 targets. The Millennium Development Goals, set at a conference in 2000, were established to “uphold the principles of human dignity, equality, and equity at a global level.” The 2012 report indicates that the number of people living in extreme poverty has been halved since 1990; the proportion of people in the world without sustainable access to safe drinking water has also been halved; and more than 200 million slum dwellers have “gained access to either improved water sources, improved sanitation facilities, or durable or less crowded housing.” At the report launch, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted that “these results represent a tremendous reduction in human suffering and are a clear validation of the approach embodied in the MDGs, but they are not a reason to relax.” Goals that have yet to be achieved include universal primary education; gender equality; reduced child mortality and improved maternal health; reducing rates of diseases such as HIV and malaria; and creating a global partnership for development.
Keenan Dillard is a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point and an intern with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program. -
A Roundup of the ‘Global Trends 2030’ Series on Population Aging
›The National Intelligence Council is trying something new for this year’s Global Trends report: keeping a blog. So far, there have been postings from analysts and contributors on everything from migration and urbanization to international banking and precision strike capabilities, but over the past week, one of the most extensive series yet went up on demography. Though youth bulge theories have often dominated population-related security discussions, 11 posts highlight the newest and least understood of all demographic conditions: advanced population aging.
In parts of the world, mainly Europe and several countries in East Asia, populations are set to become “extremely mature” because of sustained declines in average fertility to very low levels and steady increases in lifespan. Demographers measure maturity by a population’s median age – the age of the person for whom precisely half of the population is younger and half older. Japan and Germany currently have the most mature populations; both are reported to have a median age slightly over 45 years. By 2030, UN Population Division and U.S. Census Bureau projections suggest that there may be between 19 and 29 countries that pass this benchmark. In Japan, the median age is projected to be 51.
If 5 out of 10 people in a country over 50 years old sounds unprecedented, that’s because it is. In this series, titled “Population Aging to 2030,” a group of political demographers, economic demographers, political scientists, and historians discuss the implications of this never-before-experienced set of age structures.
In his introductory essay, “Population Aging: A Demographic and Geographic Overview” (cross-posted here on New Security Beat), Richard Cincotta outlines the upcoming demographic trend, identifying the particulars of these novel age structures and indicating the regions that are expected to mature into economically and politically advantageous and disadvantageous demographic profiles.
In “Population Aging – More Security or Less?,” Jack Goldstone examines the effects on the U.S. military of a maturing developed world. With the United States and their traditional allies having proportionally fewer young people, will this impact limit their ability to put “boots on the ground?” Can new partnerships be developed in order to make up for this shortfall in man power?
In “China: the Problem of Premature Aging,” Richard Jackson focuses on China’s unique set of aging issues. Due to strict immigration laws and the one-child policy, China is experiencing the most rapid aging of the major powers. The favorable age structure which has enabled huge economic growth will soon shift to being a major burden on a relatively smaller working-age population, having potential political and societal consequences beyond that.
“The Sun Has Yet to Set on China” provides a different interpretation of the challenges China faces. Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba argues that although there will be changes in age structure, the problems may be overstated and the United States may still face a challenge to its status as sole global superpower.
In “Population Aging and the Welfare State in Europe,” Ronald Lee and Andrew Mason emphasize the stresses aging will exert on the extensive social welfare programs of many European states. The combination of longer life expectancy and declining fertility rates has led to a large and increasing funding gap in the welfare system, leaving questions as to the future viability of these programs.
In “Population Aging and the Future of NATO,” Mark Haas foresees that the welfare funding gap could have far-reaching international security consequences. With European governments diverting more and more resources away from military spending to fund welfare programs, the current U.S. irritation with NATO is likely to continue, as European allies “free ride” on the back of U.S. military supremacy in order to cut their defense budgets.
In “The Beginning of History: Advanced Aging and the Liberalness of Democracies,” Richard Cincotta examines the future of the liberal democratic political systems across aging countries. With increasing pressure on resources and a large disparity likely between the native born and migrant populations, it may become challenging for these states to remain liberal and democratic.
For Toshi Yoshihara, author of “The Strategic Implications of Japan’s Demographic Decline,” the aging process will pose a question of priorities for the leaders of Japan. The decreasing number of personnel available to the military, the effects of which were highlighted by the recent tsunami, will force a strategic decision between a defense force that is prepared primarily to address immediate and local security threats or one that is trained primarily for broader humanitarian interests.
“A Demographic Sketch of a Reunified Korea” provides interesting insights into the hypothetical demography of a single, unified Korea. Putting aside the two very distinct social paths that evolved during the past 60 year, Elizabeth Hervey Stephen uses demographic projections to envisage the challenges and opportunities that could arise from reunification.
David Coleman points to immigration as a possibly-mitigating force to aging in the developed world. In “The Impact of Immigration on the Populations of the Developed World and Their Ethnic Composition,” Coleman concludes that the developed world is likely to become “super diverse” by 2030. But this trend can be volatile. International migration is subject to many political and economic factors, bringing into question whether the developed world can rely on migration to supplement their native growth rates.
In “The Ethnic Future of Western Europe to 2030,” which wraps up the series, Eric Kaufmann examines the ethnic make-up of Western Europe in the coming decades. While the size of ethnic minority populations may be smaller than in the United States, the speed of growth in these minorities is likely to be much more rapid in Western Europe. This unprecedented increase in migrant populations could exacerbate ethnic social tensions, particularly in urban areas.
The broad nature of these essays suggests that advanced population aging will emerge within the context of many types of policy debates in the coming decades. While these 11 brief essays only scratch the surface of their respective areas of research, they provide a broad introduction to the politics of advanced population aging.
Jonathan Potton is a student at the University of Aberdeen and currently interning at the Stimson Center for demographer Richard Cincotta.
Sources: UN Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Richard Cincotta. Data from U.S. Census Bureau’s international database. -
From Youth Bulge to Food and Family Planning, Los Angeles Times’ ‘Beyond 7 Billion’ Series Synthesizes Population Challenges
›Over the next 40 years, the world is set to add 2.3 billion people. Millions more will join the middle class, pushing consumption upwards and further straining the world’s natural resources. Variables like climate change and political instability will exacerbate that strain and complicate efforts to bolster peaceful and stable development. Los Angeles Times correspondent Kenneth Weiss and photographer Rick Loomis examine these numerous and interconnected challenges in a five-part series on population growth and consumption dynamics.
Speaking to demographic and health experts (including a number of New Security Beat regulars, like Richard Cincotta, Jon Foley, and Dr. Joan Castro), Weiss provides a thorough, astute, and compelling assessment of population dynamics in a rapidly changing world. The series starts with a basic introduction to population, climate, and consumption dynamics and progresses through to discuss political demography, global food security, and detailed looks at two important case studies, China and the Philippines.
Part One: A Population Primer
Population growth alone poses a number of challenges as cities become more crowded and demand for basic resources like water and food outpaces supply. Climate change and the unpredictable and sometimes extreme weather that is its hallmark “will make all of these challenges more daunting,” writes Weiss. And “population will rise most rapidly in places least able to handle it.” Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, already expected to bear the brunt of climate change with rising sea levels, shorter growing seasons, and increasingly variable weather patterns, will also have to support the bulk of the world’s population growth by mid-century. Populations in Europe, North America, and East Asia are expected to stay stable or decline in numbers.
The magnitude of growth in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, however, is uncertain. What happens from here “hinges on the cumulative decisions of hundreds of millions of young people around the globe,” Weiss writes. And yet, “population growth has all but vanished from public discourse.” Family planning in particular remains hamstrung by “erratic funding and unpredictable crosscurrents.” The result, he writes, is that even “under the best conditions, it’s hard to get contraceptives into the hands of impoverished women who want them.”
Part Two: The Arc of Instability
Drawing on work from demographer Richard Cincotta, George Mason University’s Jack Goldstone, Population Action International, and others, part two of Weiss’ series examines youth bulges and the so-called “arc of instability,” stretching across the disproportionately youthful countries of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.
When a large youth population is mixed with other societal conditions, like “religious and ethnic friction, political rivalries, economic disparities, or food shortages,” youth can be “the kindling” for a spark that ignites simmering tensions, writes Weiss. Afghanistan is a case in point, where unemployed young men are often turning to the Taliban not out of extremist fervor, but out of a desperate need to support themselves and their families. “It’s too hard to employ this many people and too easy to recruit them into violence,” Cincotta told Weiss.
And Afghanistan is just the beginning, according to Goldstone. “We are literally going to see one billion young people come into the populations in the arc of instability over the next two decades,” he said. “We can’t fight them. We have to figure a better way to help them.”
Part Three: Feeding a Growing Population
As the world’s population continues to grow, and as more families join the middle class, world food production will have to double by mid-century in order to meet future demand. “What that actually means,” says World Wildlife Fund’s Jason Clay, an agriculture specialist, “is that in the next 40 years we need to produce as much food as we have in the last 8,000.”Jon Foley on how to feed nine billion and keep the planet
Weiss presents the Horn of Africa and Punjab as microcosms of the problems facing global food production in the 21st century. Desertification and urbanization are eating away at potential cropland, while harmful farming techniques leech essential nutrients from soil, rendering it useless for future use. Insufficient infrastructure means that food spoils as it’s shipped from where it’s produced to where it’s needed, while extreme and widespread poverty means that those most in need can’t afford enough to feed their families.
Stuck between growing demand and restricted supply, the University of Minnesota’s Jonathan Foley said the challenge of the century is straightforward: “How will we feed nine billion people without destroying the planet?”
Part Four: Population and Consumption in China
China has “a greater collective appetite – and a greater ecological impact – than any other country,” writes Weiss, making it a prime example of “how rising consumption and even modest rates of population growth magnify each other’s impact on the planet.”
The country’s one-child policy slowed population growth rapidly, cutting fertility almost in half in less than a decade. Over time, a large working-age cohort with few dependents emerged, and helped China reap a demographic dividend. The resulting economic prosperity has come at a cost, however, as rising incomes and increasing consumption, spread across 1.3 billion people, have wreaked havoc on the country’s environment on a scale not seen anywhere else in the world.
Because of that scale, what happens in China will have global repercussions. Climate scientists “say that in order to avoid a potentially catastrophic rise in global temperatures, worldwide carbon dioxide emissions must be cut in half by 2050,” Weiss writes. “For that to happen, China’s emissions would have to peak by 2020” – 15 years earlier than official government projections. The government remains opposed to further limits on emissions, arguing that such limits would “cripple” economic growth – an unfair impediment considering that developed countries were able to “pollute their way to prosperity, their argument goes.”
Part Five: Family Planning in the Philippines
Weiss ends the series with an in-depth look at family planning in the Philippines – a country at the forefront of the global debate over access to contraception. Lawmakers in the 80-percent-Catholic country have steadfastly refused to fund family planning services, while support from the international community all but vanished when USAID, “the major donor of contraceptives to the Philippines,” said in 2008 that it would end its contraceptive program.
Today, half of all pregnancies in the Philippines are unintended. Lawmakers are considering a “reproductive health bill…call[ing] for public education about contraceptives and government subsidies to make them available to everyone,” but a powerful opposition, including Church leadership, has stalled the bill for 14 years, Weiss writes.Joan Castro on population-environment programing in the Philippines
Public officials, including the former Manila mayor who ended the city’s contraceptive program 12 years ago, portray unbridled population growth as an economic asset, saying that “when you have more people, you have a bigger labor force.” For the millions of Filipinos who live in poverty, however, the lack of affordable family planning services leaves them with little control over family size and puts the Philippines on track to grow from 96.4 million people today to 154.9 million by mid-century. At that rate, the Philippines would be Asia’s third fastest growing country, behind Timor Leste and Afghanistan.
Not everything in the series is dire – there are side columns highlighting population, health, and environment programming in Uganda, Iran’s successful family planning program, and Dr. Joan Castro’s family planning and marine conservation work in the Philippines. But Weiss is not naïve about the challenges ahead. Under any of the United Nation’s population projections, “living conditions are likely to be bleak for much of humanity,” he writes. “Water, food, and arable land will be more scarce, cities more crowded, and hunger more widespread.”
“Even under optimistic assumptions, the toll on people and the planet will be severe.”
But while the population challenges facing the world are many, Weiss, like many before him, makes one argument clear: providing family planning services to the 222 million women who want to control the number of children they have but cannot would go a long way towards minimizing future strain.
Be sure to check out the photo and video features accompanying the “Beyond 7 Billion” series on the feature site.
Note: The sentence beginning with “When a large youth population…” was corrected.
Sources: Los Angeles Times, UN Population Division.
Video Credit: “The Challenge Ahead,” used with permission courtesy of the Los Angeles Times; Photo: “Dharavi,” used with permission courtesy of Rick Loomis/Los Angeles Times; Jon Foley video: TEDx. -
Population Aging: A Demographic and Geographic Overview
›The original version of this article, by Richard Cincotta, appeared on the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030 Blog. It is the first post in a series on population aging, featuring Jack Goldstone, Richard Jackson, Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba, Ronald Lee, Andrew Mason, Toshi Yoshihara, Elizabeth H Stephen, David Coleman, and Eric Kaufmann.
This series, Population Aging to 2030, begins with an introductory essay aimed at familiarizing readers with some of the demographic and geographic particulars of this phenomenon, and with several key demographic terms. The term most in need of definition is, of course, “population aging.” -
Michael Kugelman, Sustainable Security
The Global Land Rush: Catalyst for Resource-Driven Conflict?
›July 31, 2012 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Michael Kugelman, appeared on SustainableSecurity.org.
On May 11, the UN approved new international rules to govern how land is acquired abroad. These Voluntary Guidelines (VGs), the outcome of several years of protracted negotiations, are a response to growing global concern that nations and private investors are seizing large swaths of overseas agricultural land owned or used by small farmers and local communities for food, medicinal, or livelihood purposes. FAO head Jose Graziano da Silva describes the VGs as “a starting point that will help improve the often dire situation of the hungry and poor.”
It’s hard to quibble with the intent of the guidelines. They call for, among other things, protecting the land rights of local communities; promoting gender equality in land title acquisition; and offering legal assistance during land disputes.
Unfortunately, however, any utility deriving from the VGs will be strictly normative. As their name states explicitly, they are purely optional. A toothless set of non-obligatory rules will prove no match for a strategy that is striking both for its scale and for the tremendous power of its executioners.
Oxfam estimates that nearly 230 million hectares of land (an area equivalent to the size of Western Europe) have been sold or leased since 2001 (with most of these transactions occurring since 2008). According to GRAIN, a global land rights NGO, more than two million hectares were subjected to transactions during the first four months of 2012 alone. One of the largest proposed deals – an attempt by South Korea’s Daewoo corporation to acquire 1.3 million hectares of farmland in Madagascar – failed back in 2009. Still, even larger investments are being planned today, including a Brazilian effort to acquire a whopping six million hectares of land in Mozambique to produce corn and soy (Mozambique offered a concession last year).
Continue reading on SustainableSecurity.org.
Sources: BBC, Food and Agriculture Organization, GRAIN, MercoPress, Oxfam, Reuters.
Photo Credit: “Garde armé,” courtesy of flickr user Planète à vendre. -
PBS ‘NewsHour’ Reports on Reasons for Optimism Amid Niger’s Cyclical Food Crises
›Set in the middle of the arid region between the Sahara desert and the equatorial savannas of Africa known as the Sahel, Niger is no stranger to drought. In recent years, however, droughts have hit more often, started earlier in the season, and lasted longer, creating a cycle of food insecurity that is becoming more difficult to break.
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Nine Strategies to Stop Short of Nine Billion
›Although most analysts assume that the world’s population will rise from today’s seven billion to nine billion by 2050, it is quite possible that humanity will never reach this population size.
My chapter in this year’s State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity, “Nine Population Strategies to Stop Short of 9 Billion,” outlines a series of strategies that would prompt significant declines in birth rates. Based purely on the intention of women around the world to have small families or no children at all, these initiatives, policies, and changes in attitude could end population growth before mid-century at fewer than nine billion people.
Examples from around the world demonstrate effective policies that not only reduce birth rates, but also respect the reproductive aspirations of parents and support an educated and economically active society that promotes the health of women and girls. Most of these reproduction policies are relatively inexpensive to implement, yet in many places they are opposed on the basis of cultural resistance and political infeasibility.
In creating this list, I sought to eschew the language and approaches of “population control” or the idea that anyone should pressure women and their partner on reproduction. Instead, I hoped to highlight strategies that could put human population on an environmentally sustainable path:- Provide universal access to safe and effective contraceptive options for both sexes. With two in five pregnancies reported as mistimed or never wanted, lack of access to good family planning services is among the biggest gaps in assuring that each baby will be wanted and welcomed in advance by its parents.
- Guarantee education through secondary school for all, especially girls. In every culture surveyed to date, women who have completed at least some secondary school have fewer children on average, and have children later in life, than do women who have less education.
- Eradicate gender bias from law, economic opportunity, health, and culture. Women who can own, inherit, and manage property; divorce; obtain credit; and participate in civic and political affairs on equal terms with men are more likely to postpone childbearing and to have fewer children compared to women who are deprived of these rights.
- Offer age-appropriate sexuality education for all students. Data from the United States indicates that exposure to comprehensive programs that detail puberty, intercourse, options of abstinence and birth control, and respecting the sexual rights and decisions of individuals can help prevent unwanted pregnancies and hence reduce birth rates.
- End all policies that reward parents financially based on the number of children they have. Governments can preserve and even increase tax and other financial benefits aimed at helping parents by linking these not to the number of children they have, but to parenthood status itself.
- Integrate lessons on population, environment, and development into school curricula at multiple levels. Refraining from advocacy or propaganda, schools should educate students to make well-informed choices about the impacts of their behavior, including childbearing, on the environment.
- Put prices on environmental costs and impacts. In quantifying the cost of an additional family member by calculating taxes and increased food costs, couples may decide that the cost of having an additional child is too high. Such decisions, freely made by women and couples, can decrease birth rates without any involvement by non-parents in reproduction.
- Adjust to an aging population instead of boosting childbearing through government incentives and programs. Population aging must be met with the needed societal adjustments, such as increased labor participation, rather than by offering incentives to women to have more children.
- Convince leaders to commit to stabilizing population through the exercise of human rights and human development. By educating themselves on rights-based population policies, policymakers can ethically and effectively address population-related challenges by empowering women to make their own reproductive choices.
Kathleen Mogelgaard assisted with research for this piece.
Robert Engelman is the president of the Worldwatch Institute and contributing author to State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity.
Sources: Bloom et al. (2011), Guttmacher Institute, Kohler et al. (2008), Population Reference Bureau, UN, UNFPA, The Wall Street Journal, Yadava and Yadava (1999).
Image Credit: Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity.
